When I was a kid, all the students at the school I attended had chores. One of those chores was attending the animals in the barn. When it came to the horses, each kid was assigned a horse to take care of. The responsibilities included currying the animal, shoveling the manure that had accumulated over night, shaking out hay, making sure the horse had a bit of salt to lick and finally, taking the horse out to the trough to get a drink of water.

In order to water the horse, you had to unhook the horse from the ring s/he was attached to in the stall, grab the halter, back the horse out of the stall, and then lead the horse outside to the trough. It wasn't very hard, but you had to be attentive. One day when I wasn't paying attention, the big work horse I was leading stepped quite accidentally on my foot. The horse was big. I was small. It hurt. But I knew, even as it hurt, that the fault was mine ... I hadn't been paying attention.

Usually, on the way to the watering trough, the horse knew exactly where we were going. You might be holding the halter and imagining you would somehow 'leading,' but really, the horse knew the way. Every now and then, the horse might be diverted by a bit of hay on the barn floor and yank you in that direction ... at which point you'd have to yank back: "No!" But aside from occasional diversions, the horse knew what s/he was doing just as the kid knew what s/he was doing. It wasn't a big deal -- just a small ritual the two would play out ... with occasional hiccups of diversion. The horse needed to drink. The kid needed to do the chore.

Easy does it was the rule. Fussing and flouncing around, making a big deal out of things, was unnecessary. Easy does it ... just do the work and things work out fine.

I had a similar experience once while sailing on the Baltic Sea. We were a bunch of amateurs on the boat, and some of us took a turn at the wheel. One of my friends kept turning the wheel constantly back and forth to keep us on course, but the ship kept slowing down. When I took the wheel, I tried to keep the steering adjustments to a minimum, just a slight shift here or there, very subtle. The ship sped up considerably.

Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,But never soddens what is open;Uncover, then, what is concealed,Lest it be soddened by the rain.